If you love sparkly Christmas lights, but want a way to keep them fresh throughout the year – or if you’re looking for a quick crafty present for a January birthday – look no further!

Why not add flowers to fairy lights? If you have a favourite craft or origami paper, you can make it up into some of these lovely flowers.

You can use loads of different origami flowers for this – just as long as you can easily make a hole to thread your fairly lights through. I’d recommend a fairly sturdy paper, to hold the folds.

I owe the idea to the crafty pinners over at Pinterest, but this is my own addition to the garden.

(If you’re new to origami – why not try my ‘paper crowns’ blog here as a way of learning the folds?)

You can see here what I did with these Lilies. I cut a small snip off the bottom, opened the flower up a bit and threaded the flowers on. To keep them secure you squeeze all of the folds back again and as long as they’re not subject to rough treatment – they’ll stay put.

Incidentally, I was so pleased with how they turned out that they became part of a Secret Santa gift. (We always tell in the end!)

Don’t worry about the flowers burning – the heat of your fairy lights is not enough to reach the burning point of paper – but please do not leave them on when you’re out of the room. If you’d like to make doubly sure you can get fire-retardant spray designed for fabric.
Happy folding!